PANJIM: After the Indian U-16 National Team lost narrowly by a solitary goal to nil against Russia in their opening match of the BRICS U-17 football tournament, Head Coach Nicolai Adam talked at length about India’s performance against Russia and India’s next opponents South Africa.
When asked about the match Nicolai said, “Russia is one of the countries which has the potential to qualify for the FIFA U-17 World Cup India 2017 and we had to be realistic against them. We had hard time to play and create clear goal scoring opportunities, but we were able to bring them at par with us in Football terms.”
Earlier the Russian Coach speaking to the media hailed India as stronger than Moldova, Latvia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“I hope nobody finds me arrogant but I agree with the Russian Coach because we prepared well in Europe for our age group and I knew our level of competitiveness beforehand.” Nicolai added.
Further when Nicolai was asked what he thought about India’s match against South Africa he replied, “We have to digest the difference styles of football in this tournament. We have already played against the European style of play in Russia and now we look forward to see the African style of play.”
“We are not the favourites to win the match as South Africa are physically and offensively better and stronger than us and possess the quality to score at any moment,” he added.
